Gay and Lesbian Activism With a Sense of Humor

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07/10/2018

On October 2, 2003, the Office of the Public Liaison at the Bush White House sent around a press release to a short list of only four names. The press release was from the rabidly anti-LGBTQ Concerned Women For America, and the subject was the Bush administration's then-nascent effort to turn the United States Constitution into a weapon against same-sex couples. The whole point of the email was to highlight how CWA and its then-president, the truly extreme Sandy Rios, was standing in praise of their boss, the president. To wit:

Mostly standard stuff of that painful Bush era. Here in 2018, it could remain exactly that. Except for one thing: one of the four people on that short email chain was the man who is now close to becoming the next justice of the Supreme Court of the United States:

Yup, that’s right: Brett Kavanaugh, then an assistant/secretary within the Bush White House, was right there front and center during that painful chapter in American history. He was in the room where it happened, so to speak.

To be fair, we don’t know for sure how he reacted. He might have secretly opposed the Bush marriage war. He might have been uncomfortable with promoting someone like Sandy Rios, what with her truly extreme agenda that includes “changing” gay people. He might have scoffed at this email. We just don’t know.

We do, however, have evidence that the man who could be deciding any number of LGBTQ matters over the next several decades was on the team that, if left to its devices, would have responded to the Lawrence ruling in a way that made Obergefell an impossibility. He was enough a part of the effort to be on an email chain of only five senior officials. That’s not nothing.

For me, it raises deep concern. But at the very least, it should certainly merit a question or two in the upcoming confirmation hearings. Better yet, maybe we can see even more (and even more substantive) of his “official duty” emails from this shameful part of our recent past.